The Chair of Pharmaceutical Chemistry was instituted at Pisa in 1860, within the Faculty of Medicine. The Department of Pharmaceutical Science was established in 1994, following the transformation of the Institute of Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Toxicology, previously known as the Institute of Chemistry and Pharmaceutical Chemistry. The Department possesses measuring instruments and apparatus for chemistry, dating from the mid-19th to the mid-20th century, which includes scales, thermometers, polarimeters, ultraviolet and infrared spectroscopes, minor laboratory equipment and slides. A part of the collection was recently donated to the Centre for the Conservation and Study of Scientific Instruments.